vailian

 Ah the joys of German living... I am off to Athens (that is Greece, not Georgia) day after tomorrow, and went to the city hall to get my Aufenthaltsberechtigungstempel (Right-to-Reside-Stamp) in my passport. After waiting nearly 45 minutes in a smoky hallway, having previously gone to a photo store to have a "biometrically permitted pass photo" taken, and having been assured that I could have the thing done on the spot, I finally was admitted into the smoky office, only to be told that she couldn't give me a stamp in my passport because there weren't enough free pages.  
"What should I do then?" I asked, and the woman said, well, the only possibility is to take the train to Frankfurt, wait in more unbearable hallways, and have the American Embassy sew in more pages. Does the American Embassy employ cadres of seamstresses who toil in back rooms, sewing paper pages into passports??